Read the drawing

Developer preview, coming soon. In BIMit 2.1.1 this tool (CAD → BIM package) is only in the developer's version: in the public beta it does not appear on the tab, in the pane or in "All tools", and your AI does not see it. With the developer's version, Paulo offers modelling and consulting.

What it does

Opens a drawing (DWG, DXF or vector PDF, on disk or on the network) and tells your AI what it holds, before any analysis:

• the layers, with how many lines, arcs, hatches, texts and blocks each one has and the role its name suggests: wall, hatch, column, door, window, partition, text, tag, area, dimension, roof, ignore (layer names are recognized in Portuguese, Italian, English, Spanish, French and German and by the AIA/ISO 13567 prefixes);
• the blocks;
• the door and window tags found (for example PA1, JA-03);
• the written areas of the rooms;
• the units (DWG and DXF) or the scale (PDF), the drawing's extents and the zone where the plan seems to be, in drawing meters, leaving out tables, legends and title block.

With "cerca" (a regular expression) and/or "zona" it lists the texts found with their position: useful to read the door/window schedule, the legends, the title blocks.

It changes nothing, neither in the model nor in the drawing.

How it works

1. Your AI calls the tool with the drawing's path (and, for a PDF, the page and the scale if it is not written on the sheet).
2. BIMit reads the file on the PC where Revit runs and answers with the summary: layers and roles, blocks, tags, areas, units or scale, the plan's zone; with "cerca" or "zona", the texts with their coordinates.
3. Your AI shows you what it found and decides with you the layer roles, the zone and the schedule to use in Analyze the plan.

Example requests

• "Read the DWG P:\Projects\School\GroundFloor.dwg and tell me which layers are walls, doors and windows."
• "In the plan PDF, page 2, search for the texts of the door and window schedule."
• "What scale is this PDF, and where is the plan on the sheet?"

What changes and how to undo

Nothing: the tool only reads. The drawing stays as it is and the model is not touched, so there is nothing to undo.

Limits

• The AI level "Read" is enough; you choose the level with the "Level" button on the BIMit tab.
• Formats read: DWG from R14 to 2018 (and later versions with the same format), DXF from R12, vector PDF. A scanned PDF (image only) is not read.
• PDF: without "scala" the scale written on the sheet is used, otherwise 1:100 (the answer says so).
• DWG and DXF: without "unita" the file's own units are used, checked on the doors; give them when the file declares the wrong units.
• The file must be reachable from the PC where Revit runs.

Parameters

Related tools

• Analyze the plan
• Drawing image